When Diane McMahon's 15-year-old son ran away in November 2005, she immediately reported him missing to Mesa police. But after nearly three years of false hope and lost leads, McMahon had given up Michael Gonzalez for dead.On Wednesday, Gonzalez's family found out he is alive and well - in state prison - and has been for nearly two years. Gonzalez, now 17, lied to Mesa police officers about his age when he was arrested in February 2006 and was able to maintain the ruse until he broke down to a prison psychologist this week.
'When I got that phone call this morning, I thought they were calling to tell us they found his body and that he was dead,' said Gonzalez's sister, Amanda Mayberry. 'I couldn't imagine my sweet little brother not wanting us to know that he was alive.'
The answer to why the teenager lied to get into prison with adult felons may rest in court documents. '(Gonzalez) stated he wanted to go to prison to show how 'bad' he was,' according to the records.
But how the teen was able to dupe the system is much more puzzling to his family and authorities. 'There's never been anything like this before,' said Nolberto Machiche, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections.
Gonzalez ran away from home once in the fall of 2005, and his mother called Mesa police, who found her son and brought him back home after Gonzalez gave officers his name and birth date.
When he got home, Gonzales vowed to never give up his information to police again, Mayberry said. Gonzalez ran away again a few weeks later, and McMahon filed a missing-persons report the following morning.
Three months later, Mesa police responded to a burglary call in the parking lot of Banner Mesa Medical Center and arrested a teen suspected of stealing car stereos and hitting a hospital security officer who had tried to detain him. The suspect spelled out his name to police as 'Michael Gonzales' and gave a birth date of July 1988. Gonzalez was born in August 1990.
Mesa police did not connect Michael Alejandro Gonzales, the suspected stereo thief, with Michael Alejandro Gonzalez, the missing person, and booked the suspect into jail. He would go on to prison and become, according to corrections records, a hardened inmate.
Even had Gonzalez not lied about his age, the teen might have faced time behind bars: State law would have obligated prosecutors to try Gonzalez as an adult, even at 15, because he was accused of having used a weapon. But his family would have learned he was alive and could have mounted a defense to keep him out of prison or, at the very least, have his sentence reduced.
| So that he could be sprung and go back to a life of stealing car steroes. |
'I know that Mesa didn't do their job. I think that if Michael was in their system, he should have come up,' McMahon said. 'I can't describe what my family's been through: Getting up every morning sick to your stomach thinking they're going to call and tell me they found him in a ditch somewhere.'
She said that although the family never used its phone, she kept that number for years just in case Gonzalez called. McMahon's mother died earlier this year not knowing whether her grandson was dead or alive.
Gonzalez never tried to contact his family and never told police or correctional authorities his real age.
| Seems like he didn't want his family to know what had happened to him. Wonder why ... |
Police typically run names of suspects through a series of databases to determine whether they have prior offenses, are wanted in connection with other crimes or are listed as a missing person. The system is supposed to flag similar names, but Mesa police are at a loss to explain what happened, other than to say Gonzalez is largely to blame.
'Our officers, based on the information we had, based on who we believed him to be, attempted to make contact with a parent or guardian but were unsuccessful,' said Detective Steve Berry, a Mesa police spokesman. 'And we were unsuccessful because the information he was giving was so erroneous.'
Once the 15-year-old Gonzalez affixed his fingerprints to a card identifying him as Michael Gonzales, 17, that became his identity in the legal system. Mesa officers took him to Maricopa County's juvenile-detention facility, but he stayed there for less than 24 hours.
Though authorities believed Gonzalez was 17 at the time of his arrest, County Attorney Andrew Thomas' office, because of the seriousness of the crimes Gonzalez was accused of, charged him as an adult for stealing stereos and stabbing a security officer with a screwdriver. Had he remained in the juvenile facility, an investigative officer would have searched for Gonzalez's family or brought in Child Protective Services, said Carol Boone, chief juvenile probation officer for Maricopa County.
When he was sentenced in August 2006, authorities believed Gonzalez to be 18, and the 16-year-old was thrown into a prison system with adult felons. Prison records show that Gonzalez seemed to fit right in. Within a month, Gonzalez was found guilty of his first major prison offense; since then, he has committed seven more, including fights, assaults and threats.
| So despite the errors the authorities seemed to have figured out just what kind of 'man' Mr. Gonzalez was ... |
But Mayberry said that's not what was happening when they were growing up in Oklahoma. 'We come from a very sheltered small-town life,' she said. 'He came here and just lost his mind.'
| The booze and the joints might have had something to do with that ... |
'I have no doubt that Michael's pretty messed up right now,' McMahon said. 'But somebody's got to answer for why my son ended up in prison.'
| Why not start at home ... |